Archive for April, 2007

Friday, April 6th, 2007

Pascha Thursday and Great Friday

We spend almost the entire day in the church on Thursday and Friday, so I can’t write much. Below are two great links with excerpts from the church fathers. If you want a peak at what our service is like, we will be streaming live video and audio from 8am to 6pm EST [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Video on OrthodoxSermons.org

Starting this week, we are uploading sermons to Google Video and embedding them on OrthodoxSermons.org. We have posted videos for the “Treasures of Holy Week” retreat and for the sermons throughout Holy Pascha.

Comments Off - Posted in AudioVisual, Orthodoxy by Andrew Mitry

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Cursing, Teaching, Betrayal and Perfume

Monday – Jesus cleanses the temple and curses the fig tree; God prepares those who will accept His sacrifice.
Let us not dry up a fig tree which may yet bear fruit, nor condemn it as useless and cumbering the ground, when possibly the care and diligence of a skillful gardener may yet heal it. [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007

New Pascha Presentation from Connecticut

Virgin Mary & Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church Of Connecticut has released PowerPoint files for the Holy Pascha week based off the book they produced. All presentations are in English, Coptic and Arabic and can be run from any machine with Microsoft PowerPoint, PowerPoint viewer or OpenOffice.org.
You can get the individual PowerPoint files from [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Coptic Presentations by Andrew Mitry

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007

Reliving with Jesus

I’ve always taken the Holy Pascha week as a time to commemorate the events Christ went through before His Crucifixion, but this year it has really taken on a new meaning for me. Starting off with the retreat, and throughout all the readings this week, Christ has reinforced the concept that we must relive [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007

Second Streaming Server

Live streaming is gaining popularity this year at St. Mark’s. On Palm Sunday, we had 145 simultaneous live viewers running a 340 Kbps (320×240) live stream.

Unfortunately, the bandwidth on our dedicated server began to choke and users were complaining that the service was a little choppy. We had already ordered a second server [...]

6 Comments » - Posted in AudioVisual, Streaming, Web/Tech by Andrew Mitry

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Palm Sunday

What an amazing day in the church! We start off celebrating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem with song, praise and procession and we conclude with a funeral. Whose funeral you may ask? Our own funeral – more on this in a bit.
Christ, riding in on a donkey and a colt was greeted [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

Lazarus Saturday

On the Saturday before Palm Sunday, the church commemorates the raising of Lazarus.
The resurrection of Lazarus is a prophesy not only the resurrection of the Lord, eight days later, but also the resurrection of all the righteous on the last day, which begins the “eighth day” of eternity.The resurrection of Lazarus is the last and [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

St. Augustine on Pascha

This Holy Pascha Week, I will be sharing tidbits garnished from reliving the week with Christ through the service readings, Treasures of the Fathers and Jesus: A Dialogue with the Saviour, this year’s choice for the book club.
St. Augustine explains why the Orthodox church uses the term Pascha:
Pascha (Passover) is not, as some think, a [...]

Comments Off - Posted in Holy Pascha Week by Andrew Mitry